Publishing and by extension, writing,
are in the throes of a revolution the like of which has not been seen since the
invention of the printing press.
Out there is a whole brave new world (or
maybe not so brave but undeniably new).
If you’re a writer in nearly any field you can’t have missed the chat,
buzz and hair-pulling about the new direction publishing is taking. If you’re a
reader (and writers are readers in addition to their writing hats) you can’t
have missed the rapid changes; the introduction of electronic readers, the ability
to read with smart phones and tablets and of course the old paperback,
hardback, newspapers and magazines still fight for their place in the market.
But, as always there’s more than one
side to a coin. You’ll read some articles raving about it’s the best time ever
to publish, that things are shifting rapidly in favor of the author. After all
there’s self-publishing now with Print On Demand and EBooks, along with the
traditional publishing paradigm. Things are great, right? Things can only get
better and better.
Then there’s the writer who tells us
about the decline in book sales and e-book sales. So it appears people are
buying fewer books each year, that people want their stories ‘visual’ meaning
video and graphic novels, anything to avoid reading the written word. They want
to return to childhood when they saw one big illustration and six words on a
page. So, in the long run, things are actually getting worse for writers,
right?
Here’s the thing. In my estimate they
are better, to a point. There are more opportunities for writers. The major
declining sales argument stems from statistics gleaned from the big publishers
and book sellers. The ‘wonderfulness of it all’ stems from the folks in love
with the new direction things are taking whether it’s Print On Demand or E
Books. In either case the writer is usually asking why can’t I get published or
if self-published, why aren’t my books selling as I’d believed they would?
Okay, readers, here’s where you come in.
You’re the central element. What motivates you? Do you have enough books in a
wide enough variety within your grasp to read when the mood strikes? Yep, I
have old fashioned books on old fashioned shelves, but I also have a Kindle (it’s
crammed full) and if there was some tragedy and I escaped my house falling down
with only my pets and my Kindle I’d be well supplied with reading material for
months – with the capability of downloading more once I reached a computer and
could access online resources. Or hitting a Wi-Fi hot spot where I could
download direct to the Kindle.
So what does all this mean? It means
that readers have a whole lot more choices to. Where once they looked for
bargains at yard sales, used book stores and promotions at the ‘Big Box’
booksellers, or just went to a library, now they can add to that list access to
plenty of digital material much of it low cost or promotionally free or buying
used books online. And don’t forget the thousands of public domain books that
can be downloaded from many sites free.
Let’s face it, Amazon became the giant
in this arena and now people can download books to their reading devices and
take an entire library, including business oriented reading material in pdf
format, anywhere they go. And readers can download even more anywhere they can
tie into an online connection.
And for those readers who still love to
hold a book in their hands and caress it, there are literally thousands of
additional titles now that would never have hit the shelves courtesy of Print on
Demand from such sources as CreateSpace. This is good and bad with the
thousands of writers jumping in to take advantage of the sudden, new
opportunity. There are some exceptional
writers who are gaining exposure. Then there are the ones who can’t spell, can’t
punctuate, haven’t taken the time to edit and manage to turn some readers off
altogether. C’mon guys, if we’re going to do this let’s all get professional.
So, bringing it full circle, the writer
needs to realize the reader is not simply now spoiled rotten when it comes to
choices, that reader is positively swamped. The reader still has all of the old resources
(how that will change in the near future remains to be seen) plus the ever
expanding online universe offering used books and Ebooks. And the competition is fierce. Who wants to
pay the publishers’ inflated prices for the newest paperback when there are so
many other choices?
In the end it’s kind of scary out there
for writers – in addition to being very exciting. Supply right now outstrips
demand in a big way creating one heckuva buyer’s market for the reader. There
always were writers who simply shouldn’t, but now they do and they’re pumping
hundreds of thousands of new books into the market (most of which aren’t worth
reading).
On the other hand, oh, joy for the
writer, thousands of writers have beaten the odds. There have been spectacular
break-outs. There have been writers published electronically who have gotten
very nice contracts from traditional publishers. There have been writers who
have done so well on their own they’ve refused said contract from said
traditional publisher.
As the writers we need to clean up our
acts, get some beta readers so you know that book is worth reading, edit it and
polish it up both with all the grammar and language angles and with the
formatting for the new venue angle. In other words take time to think not only
as a writer, but as the reader you are as well. To get the reader to choose one
writer’s work over another the writer has to make it worth the reader’s while.
